Tag: iPhone

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Genuinely excited over Apples this autumn

Yes, well, it’s been a good year with the James Grieve this year too and Jenny’s been kept very busy keeping up with the windfalls – we’ve now enough apple sauce and stewed apple to feed an army with apple crumble!

But, of course, I’m really talking about Apple’s September event and the announcements made about iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and of course the new iPhone 6s.

File:Iphone 6s.png - Wikimedia Commons

I can’t remember a set of announcements that (apart from the Apple Watch) I’ve been so excited about. I mean it! Whether that’s because I have an aging iPhone 4s and an iPad 2, or whether it’s because I’ve been waiting what seems ages for Apple to launch the new Apple TV – I can’t say. I do know I’ll be throwing ideas around in my mind for quite a while about the iPad , whilst I’m playing with the new iPhone 6s which I do intend to get.

The iPhone decision is quite easy to make. I decided to keep my 4s on iOS 7 – a good decision, it still works very well, and with a slimmed down set of apps there’s a good case to say – just keep going, use it as a phone, nothing else. However, for me, 3D Touch just looks like a huge step forward and I can see lots of developers making use of it and enhancing the experience of using the phone. Then there’s the new camera and it’s larger sensor. Live Photos looks really interesting and I’m already looking at Martin’s slo-mo videos taken on his iPhone 5/6 and thinking … that would be nice. So there you have it. I have to have iOS 9 and I have to have an iPhone 6s … but not the Plus – we are talking about a phone after all!!

So … the iPad. I made the decision to try iOS 8 on my iPad 2. Wish I hadn’t, it slowed down horribly and the experience is not relaxing as you wait as an app loads and wonder whether it’s going to, or not. So … I had made the decision NOT to bother to upgrade the iPad and to just use my MacBook Pro more, maybe upgrading that to a more portable MacBook next year, but two things have changed my mind, and left me with a dilemma that I think I’ve now resolved.

The children bought my mother a Kindle. Seeing it’s form factor and how easy it is for her to hold it in one hand made me realise that a smaller iPad COULD work for me. I’d always previously rejected the iPad Mini as I couldn’t see what it’s purpose was. This was even more the case when the iPhone 6 Plus came along, but it’s just too big to be a phone … isn’t it?

Then along comes the iPad Pro and suddenly something becomes really clear to me – there is a real use case for the iPad Pro. I can see myself watching videos, streamed media, editing photos on it and NOT on a MacBook … but not yet. It’s not the perfect device, and I’m not sure it ever will be until the Lightning connector is replaced by a USB-C connector. I’ve already blogged about this connector on the MacBook and I do seriously feel that this is the way forward for Apple.

When you’re taking pictures in RAW with a 36MP sensor, you’re talking about large files. I need to be able to save them on a portable disk if I’m going to take my iPad away on trips with me. I need a proper USB port to use and I don’t mean a Flash Drive. This storage also has to work with the software I’m using – Lightroom. So, I’m sorry, the iPad Pro will have to wait – even though it looks gorgeous and I’d love to have one.

So, the real surprise of the Apple Event was the underplayed (understandably I suppose) announcement of the iPad Mini 4. The specification has been ramped-up, it looks a really good reader with the Retina screen and I can hold a glass of wine in one hand and the iPad in the other whilst of course controlling the Apple TV with it. I think I’m sold on this device – will give it a look later today and maybe, just maybe, I’ll buy it!

So, last but not least, the Apple TV. Now Apple has a platform to make things happen on. This looks a really exciting development with the hardware being given an operating system – TV OS – that will allow the creation of apps that will revolutionise watching TV in your living room. It’s a real game changer – I will definitely be buying the large memory version when it appears in the shops in November.

Finally, why nothing nice to say about the Apple Watch? I’m just not convinced. I actually don’t wear a watch very often these days – probably something due to me being retired. I can’t see anything in it I couldn’t do without. I freely admit to possibly being wrong, but I think I can wait a lot longer, perhaps forever, to be convinced.

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Google Photos – some observations

I’m following up my previous post with some notes based on using Google Photos for a couple of days of testing and observation. This will lead into some thoughts on how I will use it, and what I need to do to make sure the Workflow is “right” for me. This might also be relevant to others, especially those using both DSLR and Smartphones, so I’d welcome comments.

The first thing to mention is that My Drive > Google Photos and the separate Google Photos menu item on your Google Drive are not the same! This is reflected in this note which advises you not to use Google Photos Backup (from your Desktop) and the sychronised My Drive > Google Photos  local folder at the same time.

What this means in practice is that if you have a Workflow that involves placing an image in your local Google Photos folder to sync to your My Drive folder on Google Drive for sharing, or for embedding in a blogpost (like the tasteful one above taken during the testing 😆 ), then you probably shouldn’t use the Google Photos Backup application.

What does this mean then? Well a couple of observations.

  1. Google Photos is a good repository for images taken with Smartphones; it’s painless, quick and ensures that if you have auto-sync switched on in either your Google Photos app, or in the Google+ app (for iOS 7, or earlier) that you have a safe and secure home for your images which will have lots of other advantages. read this excellent review by Mike Elgan for further information.
  2. If you’re a DSLR camera user then you have to think carefully whether you want to use the Google Photos Backup application on your desktop.
    1. If you don’t use any other Image Editing software then it might well be a good idea – setting the Image Quality probably to High (so that you don’t use any of your 15Mb of Free Storage) and following the guidance in the note referenced above about excluding your My Drive > Google Photos from your Google Drive synchronisation, if relevant.
    2. If you’re using something like Lightroom to post-process your images then it might be better to use the export options in the software to copy an image (or collection of images) from the software to your My Drive > Google Photos folder to sync up to Google Photos  and then on for sharing from either your desktop, or your mobile device a little later, and not using the Google Photos Backup application.
  3. Luckily none of the decisions you make now are irreversible, but a bit of careful consideration now may mean that you have the “right” workflow for your needs. For me as an iPhoneographer and DSLR camera user I’m happy to let Google Photos now be my Backup and Storage Solution of choice for the iPhone (see 1 above), but because I’m also a Lightroom user I’ll not use the Google Photos Backup application. Moreover, having made this decision it means that I can, if I chose, Import any images taken on the iPhone into Lightroom for post-processing, meaning I don’t clutter Lightroom up with images I don’t really want to keep.

Any thoughts?